these problems went away for me with version 1.32.3 and 1.33.0
I run ZM systems on Puppy Linux Tahr, Xenial and Bionic 32 and 64 bit OS's.

with these versions you are experiencing this problem with had some teething issues and were not considered stable releases at all. These were development snapshots. My advice is to jump right in to version 1.33.0 and see if these "bugs" disappear.

I'll probably not be recommending this to 6 of my clients who are looking for a Linux based system.

Some times it's better to leave the empty threats at home and worry if it's you who did not choose a stable version and not a DEVELOPMENT one to recommend to a paying client and maybe do some research as the installer and professional to see if these issues have been documented and discussed if one insists on using one of the 1.31+ series.

If you had read a little deeper into it you would have gotten the message that there is a transition to the h264 pass-through and direct to mp4 capability. In this series this system was introduced and refined. The BUG was most likely closed not out rudeness but because of depreciation of the bug meaning that in later versions it was fixed. To make it clear the Stable Release is still 1.30.4 and anything after that is still cutting edge and approaching the stable release status.

I posted a legitimate bug, and I had even searched the forums and posted in the forums before posting the bug. It was treated poorly at best. If the issue was so easy to solve, a simple explanation from an apparently experienced admin would have sufficed. Instead, you get this. I expect this from people who have zero customer service experience. In my 25 years of supporting paid software from IBM and the like, I've never seen such disregard and lack of decency from so called professionals. I run a consulting firm, and i have a multitude of clients who want to use open source software, but they are skittish of the poor support. This is a prime example. As such, the "hollow" threat is valid. I certainly won't be recommending this to anyone.

there are 2-3 developers who work on this practically alone. These guys have day jobs that actually pay the bills and there is no support department at this time. I try to help out but it is very time consuming and difficult to keep up with the demands. And as this software is free to use and to modify I do not know what you expect? I am a film Gaffer and a former weapons systems mechanic and my journey with zoneminder began because I was helping a Trout In The Classroom project to stream live over the internet cameras on a fish tank and they had no money to spend. So yes perhaps your threat is valid and there are plenty of solutions other than ZM, but for the money there is no better system out there. I did not catch your inquiries as I might have been able to tell you which version was best for your recommendations. I will also point out you are completely correct in your assumption that the developers and admin are terrible at customer service....they are software engineers, probably one of the careers furthest away from dealing with the public. Me as a film gaffer who works for the likes of people like James Cameron I have a pretty thick skin so to me whether or not you recommend ZM to your clients is completely meaningless. I am sorry I could not catch you earlier or that you caught someone's attention who could have helped but your approach to the problem struck me as aggressive whining and now it is clear to me as to why.....your job for a long time was support for IBM software and you are an expert at it....we are not that. Maybe we can find a common ground and get you in a better position to be part of a new phase of teamwork. I am game and I can pass on your recommendations on how to improve the support. I think in the long run you will find ZoneMinder to be a very reliable and powerful tool once you get it running and are more familar with it's operation. My name is Erik and I hope we can turn this around.

I was having the same issue and figured out how to correct the issue. After installing I was checking my logs to troubleshoot the issue and noticed that my times were off. I corrected the issue by changing my time zone on my Ubuntu 18.04 LTS server to match the time zone in the etc/php/7.2/apache2/php.ini file to America/New_York.